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The place I'm working for is looking for up to 4 Perl programmers at the moment (well, I think they'll start the proper search in a few days..). And there are some other companies looking for people, too.

Ony of my co-workers (how technically is in another team (front end, while I'm doing back end stuff)) in fact didn't know Perl when he started, but had several years of experience with PHP (gasp!). Now that we've converted him to the good side, he seems to be quite happy with Perl.

I'm trying to convince my company to start hiring more people outside the EU. The available pool of top-notch Perl people is very small and you have to have something "special" to recruit them in London. I think that if a company can be patient, they can easily fill their staff with work permit holders who won't demand top of the line salaries. The problem, of course, is that once they're over here, they'll see what they could be making and then they'll start to chafe.

You also have the problem that not everyone sees moving to London as a step in the right direction. There have been plenty of jobs I've been offered in the last 20+ years, that would have required me to move to or nearer the capital and I've turned them all down. I know I'm not the only one, so while companies might complain there are no Perl people, there are other factors that might not be so appealing, that are influencing some to not apply. Now if the jobs were in Birmingham....;)

... then I'd not be interested, even if it seemed perfect and was well paid, because when it's time to move on (because they hate me, or I hate them, or they go tits up) there'll be nothing else in the area, and moving sucks:-) The impression I get is that IT in the UK outside London is predominantly either academic or, umm, lower skilled. In both of those cases, the employees don't expect to be as mobile as the good people in London do.

Where are you getting that impression from? There are plenty of VERY skilled opportunities all over the UK, and I see an acedemic job once in a blue moon.

In both of those cases, the employees don't expect to be as mobile as the good people in London do.

You're looking at it from the wrong angle. Both employee and employer in London don't need to think long term because they find another job / can (usually) fill the position. Contracts are often short as they work on short term projects. Outside of the capital most employees and employers are thinking more about career progression, or developing their

Although I haven't seen these particular ads in London, it sounds very familiar to openings I've seen elsewhere. And it's not limited to Perl -- it's common throughout the industry, regardless of language choice.The root cause is that most businesses aren't in the IT business. IT is a cost center, a necessary evil of getting the real job done in the modern age. Because it is a cost center, it's an area where costs should be contained and ideally minimized. Thus the downward pressure on salaries -- on th

Over here in SG it's just as difficult (if not more) to get someone who even knows what Perl is. This perception is not a good picture of Perl, because in this part of the world it's just as difficult to get a Delphi developer.
To make themselves marketable, people like to choose tools which allows them to move around (or get hired) easily. We see less of the code enthusiasts who spend time evaluating the various styles of development tool, and decide for themselves which they will WANT to code in. But tha

I have written an essay
titled "The End of Info-Tech Slavery" [shlomifish.org] about exactly that. I should note I started writing it last month, sometimes after I got fired from my last job, so it's been brewing for a while.

You know there are a number of things about this "problem" with finding Perl programmers in London that surprise me.

First of all, I'm still amazed that employers don't see that London is as close to most senior and seasoned Perl developers as their cable modem. What's with the still-lingering demand that people be geographically located? It's insane. Wake up; the world's a different place.

Second of all, in line with numero uno above, there are a lot of senior, seasoned Perl developers in the US.